The present invention relates to an aerospace ground maneuver light and, in particular, a taxi light or a runway turn-off light for an aircraft.
Aerospace ground maneuver lights require specific light distributions. For example, an aerospace taxi light requires a light distribution which comprises a peak in the center having an intensity of 30 kcd or more and an opening angle of 35° or more horizontally and of 5° or more vertically. The opening angles are defined as the angles within which the intensity of the light is more than 10% of the peak intensity which should be as homogeneous as possible.
In modern aircraft lights, LED light sources are used. The common way of designing an aerospace ground maneuver light employing LED light sources and having a specific light distribution as e.g. mentioned above, is to use a combination of several LED light sources, all having one or more secondary optical elements such as e.g. total internal reflection (TIR) or refractive optical elements. Due to the difficulties of creating the homogeneous light distribution in the horizontal direction, it is necessary to use light that is distributed over a wide angle. To guarantee enough light in the outer areas with these light beams, the intensity of the beams has to be very high, thus tending to include much more light in the center area than required.
The current solutions not only have inferior optical efficiency but, moreover, the whole unit only fulfills the requirements by producing much more light than actually being required.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an aerospace ground maneuver light and, in particular, a taxi light and/or runway turn-off light for an aircraft having an increased optical and electrical efficiency by using a reduced number of LED light sources and optical elements.